The following speech was given by Lyndon LaRouche on April 26, at the Schiller Institute conference, entitled, "Peace Through Development in Africa's Great Lakes Region." It has been slightly edited for publication. Although I am interested in many of these subjects, and involved in many of the topics which will be discussed today, I thought it more appropriate that I address the one topic which no one else would address, which is the situation in the world, which defines the situation in Africa.

Now, I ask you to step out of being Africans for a moment, and go up to the top of a mountain, where you can see in the distance both the breadth of this planet's population, and also, see into its past, several hundred years. And, look at the situation that we're in; look down on this planet on which you happen to live, but stay on the mountaintop for awhile, and say, What is going on? Around the whole world.

Let's look at Africa, and its development, and its pain of today, in terms of what is happening around the world. And what you see is, this planetary civilization is {disintegrating}! We're on the verge, in the process actually, of the greatest financial collapse, globally, in all human history. We're at the point that the monetary systems of every country, with possibly the exception of China, can disintegrate on a given morning. That is, we could have a chain reaction in financial speculation, which, within 48 to 72 hours, can annihilate every currency, every bank on this planet, simply because everything freezes; money is no longer negotiable, because of the collapse. That can happen.

You look in the United States, over the past 30 years--again, stretch back into the past. Look at the standard of living in the United States for a typical family, and look at the contribution to that standard of living represented by the income of one working member of that family, 30 years ago. Now, look today at a comparable family. The standard of living in consumption, physical consumption, is {half.} The quality of medical care available is also about half. The educational level, I would say--maybe I exaggerate, but I don't think so--is about zero what it was years ago. The graduate of a university in the United States today is almost a different, inferior species to what they were--and they were pretty bad, 30 years ago. As a matter of fact, they've almost achieved the nadir achieved by royalty in Britain.

Look at the condition of Europe. Go through the list in Germany, or France, or Italy, of the great industries which once existed. Look at the great banks. Pick up a newspaper in Zurich about the condition of the Swiss banks. Look at the mighty Japan. Pick up a newspaper, and look at the mighty Japan. We see all across this planet, a disintegration of civilization. Look in the former Soviet Union. Look in the Middle East. We have a dying civilization. Then, look at Africa, where Prince Philip, in 1961, committed himself to defend the beast, and said he were one, in his plurality. As a matter of fact, he moved to try to defend his putative relatives, the gorillas of Rwanda--that's his conception of man, I think. Look at these conditions today. You say, this is the end.

Now, what does this mean? Before we go back to Africa as such, what does this mean about this civilization, in which Africa is locked?

What is Man?

Now, what is man? Man is not, contrary to Prince Philip, an ape. He could be an ape if he chooses to be; we'll find a zoo for him. But man is not by nature an ape. Because human beings, if they were apes, or like great apes, would never have exceeded several million people, in numbers upon this planet, during the past two million years of conditions of life. An ape-like man could not achieve a higher level of population, on this planet, at any time, during the past two million years, in excess of several million individuals. But man, by the end of the Fourteenth Century in Europe, populated this planet with several hundred million--approximately the level it had been during the time of the Roman Empire. And, since the Fifteenth Century, the population of the planet has increased to over five billion people. And generally, until the middle of the 1960s, there was a general improvement in the life expectancy and conditions of life of people.

As you know, in Africa itself, just to glimpse back at Africa for one moment, what is happening in Central Africa, in respect to life expectancy, even without this genocide: The life expectancy is dropping. Diseases which had been half-conquered, are now returning, deadly diseases. Lassa fever is spreading; ebola is spreading; the HIV, the human immune-deficiency virus, is rampant, killing off populations. Famine conditions, nutritional conditions exist, which are lowering, actuarially, the life expectancies of people throughout Africa. But then, look at Africa again, look at the planet. Look at it over the past 400-500 years. And, look at it over the past 30 years.

During the past 30 years, we have seen a descent from a world civilization which was increasing the power of the individual, increasing life expectancy, increasing standard of living, increasing productivity, improving the environment, in fact, by cleaning up some messes we used to make--and, over the past 30 years, everything has become worse. Now, why did everything become worse? Was it an act of God? Did the Hale-Bopp comet drop disaster upon this planet? Or, was it the will of man, that brought about mankind's own destruction, the destruction of this civilization?

Mankind is not an animal; we are not a creature of habit ingrained in us biologically. We are a creature of {mind.} Hence, we are in the image of God. We have the power to exert dominion in the universe. We have the power to increase man's power {over} the universe; to change the conditions in the universe, so that we may increase in number, so that our life expectancy may be increased, our health improved, and above all, the development of our minds advanced. And by these means, everything good that man has accomplished has been accomplished. When something goes wrong with mankind, very rarely does anything bad happen, which mankind did not bring upon itself.

How does mankind live, in relationship to the universe? By ideas. Language was not dropped upon us; it was developed. A whole series of discoveries, which are reflected in the evolution of languages, which we acquire from our parents, and so forth, and so on. They are inventions.

For example, here in Germany, there was a kind of civilization, we now know, in the Hartz Mountain region, about 500,000 years ago. Someone in a Hartz mine, digging in there, found a site which dated from about 500,000 B.C. In this site, they discovered artifacts of human existence, including a throwing spear made of hardwood, perfectly balanced, as the one-third length throwing spear. And other signs of civilized life. Now, this is actually two glacial ages before this time. But from all these ancient ages which are lost in the mist, beyond what we know about the past 6-7,000 years of human existence, which is all we know about history and pre-history generally, except a few odd bits, here and there.

Storehouse of Ideas

All these thousands of years, and hundreds of thousands of years, before. Our predecessors were generating discoveries, which were transmitted and re-experienced by their children. These discoveries include language, and all these other things. These discoveries, we can call {ideas.} Mankind is a creature of ideas. Mankind has had many crises; many societies have failed, because they lacked an idea which was necessary to deal with their mistakes. And other societies have arisen which discovered the idea, which solved that mistake, and so, mankind went through a crisis and then came out of it again someplace else. And this storehouse of ideas, of all human achievement, is now embodied in people from various parts of this planet. And is the common stock and property of us all. The common contribution of all ancestors of all humanity, of those proven and valid ideas.

That's how we exist. We don't exist because we were born yesterday, and went out and conquered the planet, and did something wonderful. We exist because our predecessors developed and practiced ideas, which were given to us as a heritage at the time we were born. And if we had education, we had more of these ideas. Therefore, when civilization generally collapses, one should not look in any particular part of it, to find the cause of the collapse. The disease of disintegration is nearly everywhere.

But how does this happen? How do people rule themselves? By their minds, by their ideas, their opinions, their practice. Which means, there is something wrong in the head of mankind. Something has gone terribly wrong, that was not as terribly wrong 30 years ago. But the fact that we accepted bad ideas 30 years ago, approximately, was made possible because there were defects in the world civilization existing previously, which allowed this to occur. What we're looking at is a crisis of civilization, in which then, one can understand Africa. Because the crisis of civilization, the collapse of civilization, has closed in upon and struck Africa.

Where do we stand today?

The clock is nearly at midnight. I don't know what day, exactly, or what month or what week this system will collapse, but {it will be soon.} It will not be ten years from now, it will not be five years from now, it will be soon. The collapse will occur--if he's still living, if they haven't shot him--while President Clinton, of the United States, is still President. It will occur soon. Nothing can save the financial system. Nothing can save the IMF, and what it represents today. Nothing. It's impossible! It's self-destructing. It's the {Titanic,} which is already holed, it is going under the water. Nothing can save it. It will never float again. And if humanity doesn't get off the {Titanic,} they'll go down with it. You can't save this civilization.

We've seen things like this earlier in history. We call it the brink of a Dark Age. Africa has seen a number of dark ages, where civilizations existed, then some catastrophe has occurred, and the whole culture collapsed. Mass death. Collapse of life expectancy. Virtual extinction of whole parts of the culture. We're now seeing this on a planetary basis.

As a result of the changes in technology and ideas, which occurred in the past 500 years, radiating from Europe, the population of this planet increased from over several hundred million, which had been the highest level achieved since the time of the Roman Empire, to five billion, in about 500 years. The greatest rate of increase and improvement in the demographic characteristics of human existence in all known, or assumed, or inferable existence of mankind. The existence of a population of present characteristics, say of 1965-1966; present family, demographic, population characteristics, education, culture, productive power, is a result of this accumulation of institutions associated with the modern nation-state economy.

It was the state development of infrastructure, the state promotion of public education, the increases in the universality and scope of education, first to the development in the Nineteenth Century of the universal secondary school, which did not exist prior to the Nineteenth Century, as in Germany and the United States and elsewhere. Then, the development of access to university education, in the late Nineteenth Century and the Twentieth Century. The general idea of the right of access to a university education, did not exist in the United States until the end of World War II, when it was first established by the so-called GI Bill of Rights, which allowed any veteran who was qualified, to be supported in a university education. It never existed before.

Responsibility of the Nation-State

But it is this body of ideas, this education, this improved condition of life, on which this population level depends. And, without the nation-state, that doesn't exist. Global society doesn't exist. It is the responsibility of the nation-state to take care of {all} of the territory, and {all} of the people; to provide education to all of the people. These are the conditions which we know, from this experience, on which the whole population potential of this planet depends. And without the nation-state, this is not done.

The responsibility of government, is to rule over the economy; not to privatize it. Private initiative, yes, in creation, in production, in various ways; but you must create the conditions for that initiative. Without railroads, without roads, without power, without water management, without education, without regulation and protection, this is not possible. Therefore, if you destroy the institution of the nation-state, what happens to the population level?

We now have artificial conditions of famine on this planet--that is, imposed by policy, by the IMF, World Bank, and other institutions, which have created an artificial food shortage. Africa could {more} than feed itself, with its existing land, if it had nation-states and development. No problem. But what has happened? A collapse of the possibility of human existence, means a reduction in population. It means a reduction, very rapidly, to a potential about 20% of what it is today. This means that the human population will be collapsing, over a period of about two generations, in the direction of the levels of demographic characteristics, the levels of total population, of the Fourteenth Century: several hundred million people on the planet as a whole, within less than two generations.

You see that going on in Africa, right now.

In Zaire, for example. Zaire was disintegrating, by orders given by the IMF and others to Mobutu. No army, no central administration, no nothing. Keep your little preserve. And let the country disintegrate, fall apart. Let the diamond dealers, the diamond concessions, the metal concessions, the gold concessions, the oil concessions {take it over, piece by piece.} Set up certain enclaves: Set up gold mine enclaves, diamond mine enclaves, zinc enclaves, copper enclaves. Guard these enclaves with mercenaries! Not government, but mercenaries.

And the rest of the territory around, except for one exception, is {terra incognita}--no man's land, where bands of wild people prey upon each other. With one exception: You have this nice mountain area, around Lake Victoria, the highlands, where Europeans would like to settle. Unfortunately, this nice land is overcrowded by Africans, who can be eliminated, to make way for nice houses for the Europeans, who move in to make their headquarters, from which they operate the mines in northeast Zaire (our friend from Lado has a different opinion about who owns that area), or, from Kivu and from Shaba, and so on.

So, this is the chaos, this is the new Dark Age, like the end of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, or the collapse in the middle of the Fourteenth Century, the banking collapse. And we see in Africa, a collapse of civilization, which is a warning sign of what will happen to this entire planet, unless we rid ourselves of those institutional ideas which are responsible for the global collapse which is visible throughout the planet, in large part, over the past 30 years.

China has greatly improved

The only part of this planet, in which this has been significantly reversed, for special reasons, is under the leadership, in the past 15 or so years, of the recently deceased Deng Xiaoping, in China. China has greatly improved, with many contradictions involved, but has greatly improved its conditions. It is the only part of this planet which has seen a significant improvement of conditions during any part of the last 30 years, coming out of the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" nightmare, which was going on earlier in China.

The rest of this planet is a disaster, and the disaster lies in the ideas in the heads of influential people, and the toleration of those ideas by the general population. Just think: How many people defend neo-Malthusian ideas today? How many people say the elephants are more important than the people? The gorillas are more important than the people? That's an {idea.}

So, you kill the people, even to protect an insignificant bacterium. This has come to that point! Somebody discovers a bacterium, or a microscopic organism, of a specific species, and says it's endangered. Or some kind of insect--a variety of insect, not even a species, just a different coloration--that becomes an "endangered species." What is done to human beings, to protect that species, in the name of protecting that species? That's an idea, one of the immoralities.

Who says that nuclear energy is bad? That was not thought 30 years ago, and it was {not} bad. Like anything else, you should use it properly, you should know how to handle it. You shouldn't give it to people like members of the British Royal Family, who are incompetent to handle these things. But Africa needs it desperately! Without the energy density which only nuclear plants can supply, you cannot supply the level of energy density required to meet the requirements of the African population, that is, to maintain an African equivalent of a European standard of living and demographics.

Everything else, the same thing. Free trade: destroy the right of a nation to protect itself, protect its economy. For example, take any African country. You want to set up an industry? So, the government decides to protect a certain industry, or a certain kind of agriculture. So, the government sets up trade and tariff agreements--or used to--to make it possible for that kind of agriculture, that kind of industry, to develop in that country. And you would supply protection against foreign competition, for that industry, in order to build it up, because without it, you lag.

What happened to that? No, {global society}, the unimpeded global spread of disintegration of the economy. People go into one country after another, setting up slave labor shops, in the name of "out-sourcing," and then they move on, to another place, where the labor is cheaper. This slave labor shop actually works people at slave labor conditions. What happens when people work under slave labor conditions? They become sick, they become diseased; all the population around them collapses, the culture collapses.

Those are the conditions we're facing. With bad ideas.

Now, we come, when you talk about ideas, you say, now, what, how does mankind, how is mankind forced to develop new ideas? When man {does} develop new ideas?

Well, we run along with, we believe certain things; we act on those beliefs. Then we come to a point where something happens, and our system doesn't seem to work any more. The very mind with which we believed that the old ideas were proven and valid, comes up against a fact that the same mind recognizes a fact which shows the old system doesn't work. This is called a {paradox}; because with the same mind, we see on the one side that we believe this to be true--our tradition--then, with the same mind, with the same ability, we say, "This is also true." But the two can't live in the same universe. This is a paradox. And, then the mind is forced to use the creative power of the human mind (which only the human mind has), to develop a new discovery of principle, and to act upon that to solve these problems.

This System is Coming to an End

Humanity is coming to such a point. The system of free trade, the system of Malthusianism, this system of parasitism, is coming to the end. The same mind that can perceive the system and its rules, can also perceive that the system as a whole is not working. There's no one of any significance in leadership of nations today, which will deny--privately, at least--will deny, this system in its present form is coming to an immediate end. Not merely in one country or another, but globally.

Let's skip for a moment, before coming back to that theme, to look at what is the policy for Africa. One could say, as my slightly senior friend--very slightly--as Godfrey Binaisa would say it: This is a playout of what was described as "the Rhodes Plan," under the former Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII: to depopulate Africa of its "excess" of Africans in population; to keep a few to do service to the great Bwana Makouts, to protect the elephants and other game for a game preserve for the future pleasure of the British aristocracy and others. But, essentially, to keep the vast raw materials wealth of Africa, intact, unused by Africans, as a resource for the future needs of Europeans--especially British Europeans, especially Anglophone Europeans.

That's what's happening, isn't it? The Africans are being eliminated; by methods, methods a little more sophisticated than Hitler used; but, just as effective: strife, famine, disease, IMF conditionalities, World Bank conditionalities, agents, compradors, new Ghenghis Khans like Museveni, turned loose--barbarians--turned loose upon the land, to {depopulate} Africa. "There're too many people in it," they say. To take the natural resources, the gold, the petroleum, the natural gas, the diamonds (which are not much, in the way of natural resources), and the kinds of strategic minerals you've found in the South African Shield, and so forth. And a few choice pieces of real estate, such as Rwanda and Burundi, intended for sale to wealthy Europeans. Eliminate the excess population. Preserve the animals for future game hunters from Europe and keep the resources.

Why are they doing this?

This has been going on, especially in the past two years, since the beginning of 1995 in a massive way; the fellows in London and similar precincts recognize that the financial collapse of the system is inevitable. They've recognized that for a number of years, that nothing {can be done} to save the present international financial and monetary system. And what do they say? They say, therefore it's going to happen; let's prepare for it. What do they do to prepare for it? They seize control of a shortened, contracted world food supply, international food supply. They seize control of those natural resources upon which civilized human life in the future depends. Let money go out of existence. Let the banks vanish in a great crisis. Let national borders crash.

Then, look at the 22-odd companies which control 83% today of the raw materials production of Africa. They, with their mercenary armies, sitting pretty on that property; they're doing the same thing in Central Asia--or attempting to do so. So that, when the world collapses--the civilization in its present form, collapses--these fellows have already charted out and are fighting, scrapping among each other like monkeys in a zoo over feeding time, to try to get control of one or another of these natural resources, and building up mercenary armies to hold possession of these things. {That's where we are.} And, that's where the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy stands, behind this operation, and that's where the financial system stands. {This is the paradox which faces us.}

How Africa can Change the World

Is there a solution?

Yes, there is. The solution involves, unfortunately, power. Global power. And, it involves ideas which must be imposed upon that power. Including the idea of what's happening in Africa--and I'll come, in conclusion, to that point: how Africa can help to change the world, as a whole. The power lies in essentially two places. In 1988, as earlier, I put forth a policy for the impending collapse of the Soviet system, the Warsaw Pact system. I gave that address in Berlin on October 12, 1988, which happens to be, Columbus Day in the Unites States. And I said that the time had come, that the Warsaw Pact-Comecon system was about to disintegrate--as I had warned over some preceding years, would happen under the present policy; that the unification of Germany was in the immediate view, and obviously Berlin would be the likely choice of a future capital of a reunited Germany; that under these conditions the part of Europe which is essentially an area from Paris, down to Vienna, up across Czechia into Berlin, and back by way of Lille to Paris, is a concentration, historically, of the greatest density of machine-tool-design potential on this planet.

And, that what must be done, and, for example, in most African countries you have {no} machine-tool capability--design capability. Only in South Africa is there come machine-tool capability of any significance, in {all} of Africa. That is, machine-tool design capability. And, that this machine-tool-design capability must be hooked up, especially in Asia, to those masses of the population which must have technological progress. And, that we should mobilize the, admittedly impaired, but nonetheless existent resources of the former-Soviet economy, to participate in the production of the massive wealth required to meet this requirement for what would be called--or was called--the developing sector of the Third World, at that time.

Well, something different happened. And, Helga, when I was in prison, proposed this in 1989 (Ralf Schauerhammer was part of it; others were part of it), proposed it as the "European Productive Triangle." That the center of Europe must mobilize itself for this purpose of transforming the planet by reaching out, in the case of the breakup of the so-called "Cold War apparatus" to utilize the resources of the former Soviet Union--the productive resources--together with those of Central Europe and elsewhere, in order to reach out and provide technology to these other parts of the world, the so-called Third World. And that, where the idea of developing what I call "spiral arms," using the analogy of the galaxies, the astrophysical galaxies, must, in transportation, development corridors, must reach out across the world to bring, among other things, to bring such corridors from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and down to the Indian Ocean, and thence into Africa and other continents. That must be the plan.

Well, it didn't quite work that way, for various reasons--political reasons. But, then, in the course of things, China picked up on this; and, China called this a "Silk Road Policy." So, instead of having a proposal which I had originally proposed, of working from Central Europe, from the great concentration of former productive potential, through spiral arms, into other parts of the world, the developing sector, we now a situation where a developing nation, an old nation, but a developing one, China, was now taking the initiative in pushing the same kind of spiral arms back toward Europe, and elsewhere. Now, this, the Chinese call "The Silk Road Project." We call it generically, "The Eurasian Land-Bridge Project." And, you'll hear more about that, as you wish, in the course of the day, and tomorrow.

Now, you saw recently this week something very interesting happened. Let's go back to the previous week: In Denmark something terrible happened--well, terrible things {do} happen in Denmark, after all, it's the nation of Hamlet, right? Where, remember the end of "Hamlet," where the--some of you may know that particularly those who came from Anglophone countries--where, at the {end} of the drama, Hamlet, who cannot make the decision which would save Denmark in itself, because it's a strange idea, {clings} to his old ideas, and he, and Denmark, go into the bucket, as a result of this at the end. And, then, the final word in Shakespeare's character is to say, Let us reflect upon these events, while they're fresh in our minds, that we may not repeat this mistake, in a work again. We hope that Denmark never repeats this mistake again.

But, the Danes put out a resolution condemning China. Now, some of you may know, if you've followed history at all, that the fellow that became King Edward VII of Britain was very much opposed to an idea which came out of the United States; and came out of the United States by way of Germany and Russia and so forth, which was called the great railroad development project, that we had, in the middle of the 19th Century, we had developed corridors of development across from the Atlantic to the Pacific, using railroads.

Henry Carey's Railroad Project

And, the leader, the political leader, of the United States' patriotic faction after the assassination of Lincoln, was a fellow from Philadelphia--a rather aged fellow at that point--Henry Carey. And, Henry Carey proposed, with his friends in Europe and elsewhere, proposed the development of a network of railroads from the Atlantic Coast, to the Pacific, and to the Indian Ocean, but, especially from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Involved in this, before the end of the century, were Japan (which was, until 1894, an ally of the United States against Britain); involved was Sun Yat-sen (who was a protege of the United States in his youth--again, an enemy of Britain), the father of Modern China, and which Beijing again emphasizes today.

And, the idea was, to bring these forces together to develop the great Central Asia thing, and to bring the tool potential of the United States, and of Central Europe, to bear in solving the problem of development of Asia, where the greatest concentration of population is. In response to this, the British organized World War I, and also put Hitler into power--and that's a fact--in Germany in 1933, in order to prevent this from occurring; because, the natural impulse, from Germany, since this 1876-1879 period, has been this direction. And, you will find in Germany today, despite governments, there {still is} an impulse toward this kind of development in Central Asia, and so forth.

So, now what has happened, is the Chinese have taken this up. And the British are out {to destroy it}--the British are out to make war against China. They're engaged in virtual war against China, they're involved in war against me, as I hear from Scandinavia recently, and they're also engaged in, against Clinton, trying to destroy the President of the United States.

Now, here's what the policy is: You've probably noticed the week, after the Danes joined their British masters in attacking China, on human rights (as well as human rights of cannibalism, in the British mind) but, now, in refutation of the fraud which was picked up in the European press, that the United States had sponsored the Danish resolution--which it had {not}, it was a British concoction, blamed on the United States. The United States government denied that, immediately.

Now there has occurred this past week, in Moscow, a meeting between the President of China and the President of Russia, in which a historic agreement has been reached, which is not final and not definitive, in which Russia will participate, in cooperation with China {and with} the nations of Central Asia, including Iran, in great development projects. India is in the process of trying to associate itself with this, and has reached agreements and understanding with China on this project.

Recently, you find the reaction to this announcement from Moscow, is that the President of the United States, Clinton, seconded by his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright (who he apparently has under control, for the time being), and, together with Japan's Hashimoto, have endorsed this cooperation between the former Soviet Union, in fact, and China.

So, what you have in process, is a Great Project, the Land-Bridge project, which presents the possibility, of an economic recovery for this planet--that is, a revival of economic activity on a sufficient scale to revive a sinking world economy. This policy is in general is supported by the President of the United States.

The Maastricht Suicide Pact

Europe does not function at present. The Europeans could not make a decision on the Balkans; the Europeans can make no decision on anything. Maastricht is not only a suicide pact, it's like Seneca in the bathtub, committing suicide with many cuts. These are called budget cuts--and that can kill you, too. The Europeans don't function. The European goverments don't function. They're killing their economy. France is being destroyed; Germany is being destroyed--every other part of Europe is being destroyed--but, {by it's own hand!} It's cutting it's own throat. There are no burglars in the house. The man of the house is cutting his own throat. So, Europe doesn't function.

Apart from the British Empire--which still exists, which my dear friend Godfrey and I agree completely on that--the British Commonwealth is the British Empire. Britain is simply a particular zoological specimen, which is administered by a certain Grand Guignol called a Parliament. The empire and Britain are actually controlled by a Privy Council, which is the agency of an oligarchy, which has selected a certain so-called Royal Family as its Doge, its Venetian-style Doge, hereditary Doge.

But the British Empire, with its financiers, its large corporations, its East India Company-type relics; which controls the entire Commonwealth, which controls their governments, which controls the selection of the ministers of governments of Commonwealth countries, which controls the finances of every Commonwealth country; which controls the foreign policies of Commonwealth countries--as it does Mandela, when he got back into South Africa, and South Africa got back into the British Commonwealth--it was the first thing that happened; the British took it over totally, and they took over Mandela totally. His policies became the policies of the British Commonwealth, just like another Sonny Ramphal, as if we didn't have enough of those already.

So, that is the kind of situation. That is the enemy power. The only power on this planet which can resist that, is a combination of the government of the United States--the Presidency of the United States--and China. Together with a number of other countries which have joined together with them, to do two things. First of all, we require the projects, we require great economic development projects, especially infrastructure projects, spread throughout this planet, to reverse the effects of the past 30 years, and to go on to remedy the great injustice which should have been remedied at the end of World War II. And, Roosevelt would have attempted to do so, if he had lived. That is, to eliminate the injustice of colonialism, and its effects, and to establish equality, as Roosevelt intended. That economic project is the basis for doing it economically.

Secondly, we must rid ourselves of the cause of our present distress, and that distress, of course, takes the form of this great financial, and monetary, and economic collapse.

Now, you have all heard about companies going into bankruptcy, being reorganized in bankruptcy. This system is bankrupt, financially bankrupt, monetarily bankrupt. Therefore, governments must act to put the banks into bankruptcy, to put the monetary system into bankruptcy. We must build a monetary system, a new monetary system, which is in accord with great projects needed to develop the economies of these parts of the world. This cannot be done by the consent of all nations, nor can it be done as a great international discussion ongoing for years.

You're faced with a situation in which a catastrophe is occurring, the collapse of the financial system. You must {act.} If you do not act, billions of people will die. You have no time to discuss; you should have discussed it earlier, when you had time. Therefore, the fate of humanity now hangs upon a few powerful decision-makers, who have the power, pre-emptively, to force the system into bankruptcy reorganization, and to create a new system which is more equitable, and is in agreement with our economic purposes.

The only agencies which can conceivably do that, on this planet, are the partners of an agreement between the President of the United States and China. That is enough power, with the support of Third World countries which will welcome it, to break the power of the present system, the IMF system, as people like to call it.

There's another ingredient to this process, however. Intellectually--I don't need to go through it here, because I've written about it so much--intellectually, there are certain specifications which will make the system work. There are precedents for what we propose, established precedents. That's not the problem. Where are we going to find the {passion} to act on those ideas which are the solution? It's something which is called in the Greek, and in the New Testament Greek, {agape.} All of you know it, whenever you did an act of discovery of a valid principle, a rediscovery, as in school, or someplace: You tried to relive the process of a great discovery. And, you went through the paradox, the previous belief, the evidence against the previous belief, and you tried to resolve that paradox, you tried to find out what was the truth, a higher truth, than you had known before. How did you do that, if you did it? You had to sustain your concentration. You had to develop a certain kind of emotional power, which would enable you to force yourself to stay with the problem, not to go to sleep on it, until you'd reached a solution. It's the power of {agape.} There must be {passion.} A computer has no intellect! It has no passion to solve problems! It is {passion.}

The Passion of Africa

Let's speak, in the Christian sense, of the passion of Africa. The passion of Africa can be a key part of impelling governments, such as the partners of an effort between the United States Presidency and China, to solve this crisis. To use the existing ideas, which could solve the crisis, and make them real.

What is Africa? We in the United States, working from the United States, are aware that nobody seems to care about Africa anymore, in governments. There is no constituency for Africa in the United States. There may be people who {say} there's a constituency for Africa in the United States, but it doesn't exist, as Jacques Bacamurwanko (former Burundi Ambassador to the U.S.) can tell you. It can be created, however. And that's one of the things we're doing. It can be created around the world.

What is happening to Africa now, the {horror} of it, must be made clear to the governments--I think China will accept it, but the government of the United States and others, and forces around it. The horror. The fact that we allow, that the nations allow what has been going on in Africa, especially in the recent years, to continue, is a condemnation of the conscience of the nations. And to these nations we can say, that if you continue to allow this to happen in Africa, you do not have the morality or the impulse required to save your-own-selves from the crisis which is coming down.

So, we must, with our weakness--and I speak of "we" in Africa, in this case--we must use our very weakness, as a force to move the great powers. And that power we have, in weakness, is to use the full horror, even by name, of the child who died by the road, under Museveni's and Kabila's torturers. To say, that person died, that child died, that woman died, that man died, that intelligentsia of Burundi which is being murdered, slaughtered, died; but they're not just cattle! These are {individual human beings,} who are dying in the hundreds of thousands, approaching the millions. They are being murdered. They are being murdered by the people that you are hosting, as being {salonfahig,} in the governments, and similar proceedings, in the United States as well as in Europe and Britain. Which the press, of Europe and the United States, is praising as the great figures.

Kabila, nothing but the lowest of all common criminals, is being called a "rebel" and a national leader, and he is nothing but a thief and a butcher. Museveni, who is nothing but the Mussolini of Uganda (who was supported by the British in his time, too, eh?), is treated as a respectable figure. A mass murderer! Kagame, the same thing: another gangster, who at one point was supported by George Bush, the President of the United States. The same thing.

And this is going on.

What about the faces, what about the individuality, what about the personality, the possible future, of that child or that woman or that family? What are we going to say? We have the test of death, which we have to face in our own life. That is, did we simply use this mortal existence to get pleasure and satisfaction, or did we use the talent given to us, to return it when we died, somewhat enriched? Did we make something of our lives, as they say in simple language.

Also, we are accountable for what we do to others! Not just to ourselves. There's a human being; who knows what potential is lost when that person dies, as a child, by the side of the road. And they're stacked up like cord wood on the side of the road! And these governments which know that can sit back and still say, "Museveni is human. Kabila is human. These are respectable people who must be dealt with respectfully."

That is the passion. If you allow that, what about {your} child, {your} sister, when the time comes. Who will weep for them? If you can allow this, you lack the moral fitness to survive, and the record of history is clear. In the fall of empires and entire civilizations, when mankind makes a mistake, in ruling ideas, mankind is punished by calamities. And when civilizations do not respond to the calamities thus brought upon them, then the universe is so designed, by the Creator, that it does something to {purge} itself of that disease, which that civilization has become. And this is such a time. And thus, in Africa, I think, as I said at the beginning, to understand Africa, {we here,} in this room, must not allow ourselves to be so involved with the details on the ground, that we lose sight of that knowledge and overview which is needed to win.

We must rise to the mountaintop, from which we can see the past and the breadth of humanity, at least for some distance. See what has happened to humanity, and use our knowledge of the problems which are confronted in the centers of power, to use the very horror of what has been done, the crimes that are being committed in Africa, to use that as a lever, to force people to discover, within themselves--including the President of the United States--to discover the {passion} to do what is necessary to save all humanity.